We estimate the economic value of changes in saltwater fishing regulations to anglers fishing on charter and private boat trips in southeastern U.S. waters. Our new estimates of angler willingness to pay (WTP) are for hypothetical changes in the bag limits for dolphinfish, Coryphaena hippurus; red snapper, Lutjanus campechanus; other/aggregate snappers, Lutjanidae spp.; grouper, Epinephelus spp. and Mycteroperca spp.; and king mackerel, Scomberomorus cavalla. We use a multispecies choice experiment with varying levels of regulations (e.g., bag limits), not catching or keeping fish. The focus on changes in regulations, instead of catch, allows us to explicitly consider how angler WTP might vary over the range of potential regulation levels, including closure. We compare three specifications of WTP for regulations that span the range of economically reasonable behavior: no decreasing marginal WTP (linear increasing WTP), piece-wise linear WTP, and absolute decreasing marginal WTP, where only the first unit has value (i.e., anglers care about the opening of the season but not about how many fish they may keep). We find absolute decreasing marginal WTP for four out of the five cases we can evaluate. We also test whether the WTP for regulations depends on the mode of fishing (charter or private boat). After controlling for differences in party size, we find no statistical evidence that the WTP differs between the two modes.
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Liese et al. (2017) studied this question.
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